Webber still unsure on Red Bull pace compared to Vettel

Australian is not much closer to understanding why his Red Bull Racing car was slower but is still drawing some positives from the season opener last month.

Mark Webber is not much closer to understanding why his Red Bull Racing car was slower than his teammate Sebastian Vettel's at the Australian Grand Prix but is still drawing some positives from the season opener last month.

The 34-year-old came into the season with high hopes after finishing third in the championship last year but had a disappointing weekend in Melbourne as Vettel, the world champion, claimed a pole to flag victory.

Webber, who admitted his frustration at finishing fifth, said the post-race briefing with his engineers had gone on much longer than usual but the telemetry had not proved conclusive.

"We found a few pointers in the data but we'll need to strip the car down before drawing any conclusions," he wrote in The Daily Telegraph.

"Only then will we know whether something was broken, or whether there was something fundamentally wrong with the car. More than anything, I struggled with a lack of grip. That affected the longevity of my Pirelli tyres because the degradation was much higher on my car than on Seb's."

The second race of the season takes place at Sepang this weekend and Webber said Vettel's clear superiority over the field in Australia was also a positive for him heading to Malaysia.

"Seb's pace proved that Red Bull Racing have built another great car this season and we both had impeccable reliability," he wrote.

The tyres proved less of a factor in Australia than many thought they would but Webber thinks Malaysia could be different.

"The heat and humidity will push tyre temperatures into uncharted territory," he said.

"All of the winter testing in Europe was done in cool conditions and although Melbourne was hotter, it was nothing like the conditions we're expecting in Malaysia."